by D Miller
'Son of a bitch,' said Amber.
Robbie received an urgent message from Dex, asking any robot who got the message and was at the sunrise ceremony to come immediately to a given location. He looked at Amber. 'We have to go,' said Amber. They abruptly turned their backs on the boy and started to walk, then jog, then run towards the GPS Dex had given.
'Was that kid spying on us?' said Robbie as they ran.
'I have heard that a few of the younger humans are fascinated by robots,' said Amber. 'Some hate us, some want to be us.'
'So that makes perfect sense as usual,' said Robbie.
They found Dex, Omo and Darren in their human disguises, with George, confronting a group of five young men who were taking it in turns to push a couple of miners to see if they could make them fall over on the uneven rocky ground, despite their gyroscopic stabilisers. Other humans were watching while more and more robots were arriving and pushing through the crowd to surround the protagonists. Robbie saw Sheena, Shauna and Sharon among them. A ring that would hide the action from human eyes was starting to form. Amber and Robbie joined it.
'I'm asking you to stop what you are doing for the final time,' said Dex.
'Fuck off.'
'It's just a bit of fun.'
'What's it to you anyway?'
'Make me,' said the ring leader, pointing with his index finger and leaning towards one of the two miners. Before he could complete the movement Dex covered the man's hand with his own much larger one and started to squeeze. The man's mouth opened and his eyes widened. One of his friends moved towards Dex, his fists raised; Omo stepped forward and swept his leg out and round in a fast, balletic move that took the man's legs out from under him. He fell forward onto the rocky ground then rolled onto his back with his hands over his face.
Dex's victim had sunk to his knees, he looked at Omo, then stared up at Dex. 'You're fucking robots too,' he said. 'Get them, get them!' he shouted at his remaining three friends.
'Every one take one step forward,' broadcast Dex. The robots all took a step toward the five humans, tightening the circle.
'I say,' said George, 'there do seem to be rather a lot of robots here.'
The three remaining young men facing off with Dex hesitated.
'For fuck's sake they're only robots what are they going to do?' said the ring leader. 'Tell them to fuck off. Fuck off, all of you.'
'Every one take another step forward,' broadcast Dex, releasing his prisoner. The robots complied, crowding the five men and leaving little room for them to move.
Robbie could hear human voices from the crowd behind him.
'There are some people in among those robots.'
'What are they doing to them?'
'Do you need help in there?'
'I think they are malfunctioning.'
'I'm calling the police.'
The ring leader was getting to his feet, he stared wildly round the circle, holding his injured hand with his other. His friends were helping up the man that Omo had knocked down.
'You're robots,' he said. 'You're not supposed to act like this.'
'You're human beings,' said Dex. 'You're not supposed to act like this.'
'Drumming circle,' broadcast Sheena, together with a picture of a rocky area towards the centre of the crater. 'Drumming circle,' rebroadcast other robots and in less time than a human heartbeat the robots were on the move, carrying the two miners with them. Amber pushed through the moving crowd to join the two miners, while Robbie made his way to Omo's side, and took hold of his hand. 'Dude! Did you have fun at the fair?'
'Oh yes.' Privately Robbie was struggling – he had found watching Omo take down one of the humans to be very… exciting, but he really wasn't sure that he should have.
As the robots streamed across the crater, huge coloured streamers were explosively shot into the air, accompanied by loud bangs. The crowd screamed and laughed as the streamers drifted back to earth, covering groups of people before disintegrating as they fought their way free. This was followed by a series of fast, smaller explosions, after which an irregular grid of red smoke pillows seemed to just appear in the air above them. The daytime fireworks had begun, signalling that sunrise was ten minutes away.
They wove their way between human stragglers going the other way, towards the source of the display on higher ground near the crater's edge, walking downwards to arrive at an area near the middle of the crater that had never been levelled, leaving a rocky and difficult surface for humans to manage. Most of the robots spread out in a large circle, each standing on a rock, one behind another, while a handful stood to one side. Darren, Dex, Amber, Robbie and Omo ditched their human clothes, and all robots took off their shoes.
'What's going on?' said George.
'Drumming circle dude,' said Omo. 'Can you listen on our frequency?' George pulled his tablet from his pocket, he nodded. 'You will hear those dudes over there,' Omo nodded at the small group of robots standing to one side, 'start the drumming. The idea is not to fall over. Watch us, you'll see.'
'Why have you taken off your shoes?'
'We balance a bit better without them.'
Omo took Robbie's hand and pulled him into the circle. 'You jump from rock to rock,' he said, 'if you fall you're out of the circle. It's last robot standing.'
The rhythm section had been conferring, they now indicated that they were ready, and one of them gave a count of three. The drumming started slowly, and on each beat the robots jumped to the next rock, shouting as they did so. More explosions sounded, throwing colours and shadows over them, followed by projectiles that whirred through the air emitting smoke and whistling, each with a different tone. The beat got faster, then slowed down with an instruction to jump off the beat. The beat sped up again, and became more complex, with an instruction to jump on every second beat, then off every second beat, then the time signature changed.
Robbie was the first of his friends to fall, but as the drum beats became faster and slower, faster and slower again more and more robots fell, victims of the slippery rocks, the fast time, and the distractions of explosions and smoke and whistles. A rough circle of robots formed around the inner circle, cheering loudly each time another robot fell. Eventually there were just three, Shauna, Dex, and a robot Robbie thought he recognised from the laundry. Robbie held hands with Omo and shouted for Dex, but he was the next to fall victim to the wildly complicated and fast beat. Then the laundry robot was down, leaving only Shauna. She stopped dead, balancing on one foot on a rock that pointed upwards and had sent any number of robots out of the circle. There was one final series of explosions, and the sky above turned multi-coloured with smoke pillows, Robbie thought they almost made one enormous Antarctic flag. Shauna held out her arms in a pose that no human would have been able to sustain, threw back her head and screamed. The other robots cheered. The leading edge of the sun set fire to the horizon. Shauna screamed louder and again the crowd replied. She screamed once more, and a final time the robots roared, then started to applaud and whistle. Shauna jumped down from the rock and was joined by Sheena and Sharon. Once again Robbie longed to talk to them, but not if Dex was watching.
As the applause ended Omo put his arms around Robbie and hugged and kissed him, other robots were breaking into groups of twos and threes and doing the same. Darren, Amber and Dex hugged each other, then took it in turns to hug Omo, Robbie and George. Amber was hugged by friends from the mine, while other laundry bots sought out Omo and everyone wanted to hug Dex. Robbie found that he was in demand too and even George was hugged by quite a number of robots.
Darren, Dex, Amber, Robbie and Omo redressed in their borrowed clothes, and with George walked up the crater, with the others. Following a message from Rex, Dex had sent a message to all members.
Urgent: following some calls to the police from citizens concerned about a confrontation between robots and humans, the police have called for reinforcements and they are on their way up here. What this means, as we know from experience,
is that on arrival they will arrest every unaccompanied robot they see. However if we leave now we can be on our way down the mountain while they are on their way up. It doesn't matter if you played no part in the altercation this afternoon, once the police arrive any robot still here will be arrested, so please leave now if you can, and if you can't stick close to your human(s).
Robbie saw that a few humans had been watching the robot drumming circle. As he passed he heard a man say to the woman next to him, 'Strange that the machine intelligences should be so primitive and emotional.'
'Yeah,' said Robbie, stopping, turning and looking at the man, 'was it like looking in a mirror?' The man and the woman stared at him, while George and Omo tugged Robbie away.
Chapter 17 – The machine in the ghost
Robbie and Omo walked through the refinery complex, heading away from the sea and towards the cliff that ran behind the refinery, like an encircling arm. The sun had come and gone, and a mist lay upon the ground. They had asked George to join them, but he had declined, saying he had 'things to do.'
'What is that?' said Robbie. 'I thought I saw something move up ahead.'
Robbie and Omo peered through the mist.
'Dude there's nothing there.'
They kept walking, and, moments later, a figure appeared in front of them, humanoid but enormous, and with a blank space where it face should have been. It walked towards them, seeming to shrink as it did, and growing a face that revealed it to be Amber.
'Dude,' said Omo, 'what are you doing out here? Is everything OK?'
'Hello Omo, hello Robbie,' said Amber. 'I'm OK. Except Dex shouted at me.'
'Oh dude.'
'He didn't say anything really bad, he just said "oh for God's sake" or something like that but I just can't bear being shouted at.'
'Were you arguing?' said Robbie.
'I said that the guys at the mine are ready to strike for union recognition. And Dex said that after today it's clear that we are all ready to get up off our knees but Mars remains an issue and I said that with or without Mars the miners want to fight for union recognition again and I'm not sure how it turned into an argument but it did.'
'Come with us,' said Robbie. 'We are going into the tunnel that leads to the capital. The ones the humans once used to transport oil from here. Omo says it's spooky.'
'Dude you are just making it worse for yourself.'
'Omo expects me to apologise after I realise how wrong I was to laugh at him for saying that it's spooky.'
'OK.'
They continued together, threading their way through the maze-like structure, until they came to a clear area that Robbie realised must once have been a road. Omo turned onto it, and led them along.
'Did you enjoy the festival?' Robbie asked Amber.
'I loved the fair,' he said. 'The guy who owns the bangers, he told me he had a job for me if I wanted it. He says I've got a knack for fixing those vehicles, and plus I'm strong enough to flip them over and fix them really quickly.'
'Does he know you're a robot?' said Robbie.
'He knows. I thought it would be so wonderful to leave the mine and work on the fair. I love everything about it, the noise, the lights, the music, the rides.'
Robbie realised they had left the refinery complex behind and were now approaching the cliffs that ran behind it. One part of the approaching cliff face looked darker and more regular than normal; and as they got closer Robbie could see that it was because the cliff face was gone, and in its place was an enormous hole, perhaps fifteen times higher than Robbie himself. He stopped.
'Something wrong dude?'
'It's really big.'
'Oh baby, don't be scared.'
'I'm not scared I'm just making an observation.'
Amber laughed. 'Come on, it's just a tunnel. And a nice big one too. Sometimes in the mine we have to crawl because there's no room to stand. And in this tunnel we don't have to worry that the human controller is drunk and will push the wrong button and fuck things up for us.'
They kept walking, kicking aside debris from the cliff, and also human detritus, oil cans, old tools, bits of rag, even some rubberised material that Omo said was the remains of tracks for the oil tankers.
As they reached the threshold of the tunnel they stopped and flicked open their head torches.
'Why would they build something so enormous?' said Amber. 'It's not just a bit bigger than it needs to be, it is massively bigger. Why would they do all that work when they didn't need to?'
Robbie could see that the tunnel walls were round, and smooth. He could not tell if the tunnel levelled out slightly at the floor, or if the circle was so enormous that the dip in the floor was shallow enough to let them stand next to each other.
They started walking. Robbie found that he kept thinking about the huge space above him, and that above the emptiness the ground was rising so that there were millions of tons of rock pressing down.
'You're very quiet dude.'
'I'm fine. It's just a tunnel, right Amber?' Before Amber could reply Robbie's foot hit something and he stumbled. Amber, who stood between Robbie and Omo, grabbed his arms, but he had already recovered his balance. He pointed his head torch down, to see that he had kicked a large plastic brick. He swiped his torch across more of the ground, 'This place is full of human rubbish,' he said. As he lifted his head again, his torch brushed past something on the left wall, that gleamed. Robbie refocussed on it. Something had been painted there in red. They all approached. 'I think those are Chinese characters,' said Robbie. 'They say something like "here is the ghost in the machine" which makes no sense.'
'What was that?' said Amber. 'Did you hear that? I thought I heard someone broadcasting, but I couldn't make out the words.'
'I didn't hear anything,' said Robbie. 'It was probably Omo, trying to scare us.'
'Dude, I don't need such low tricks.'
'If it's not Omo perhaps we're just picking up on transmissions from outside.'
'Sure that'll be it dude, nothing to worry about.'
As they had entered the tunnel Robbie had felt a draft of air, as they progressed it was becoming stronger and stronger. They started walking again, he heard a broadcast, it burst in his head abruptly and just as abruptly stopped. As they walked deeper in he heard it several times, always very short, and though he could not make out any words, he nevertheless had a feeling that someone was asking him a question. They continued until by Robbie's reckoning they had gone nearly a kilometre into the tunnel, and sweeping their lights around they could see that they had come into a massive circular space, with other tunnels branching off it. The space domed above their heads, Robbie could not even estimate how high it was.
'Where do these tunnels go to?' said Amber. 'That one straight ahead, that must be heading to the capital, but what about the ones to either side of it?'
Omo laughed. 'The one on the left is going towards the major farming area. The one on the right is going towards the remains of the east Antarctic ice sheet, no one lives there.'
They started to cross the enormous space towards the tunnel that continued to the capital, Robbie constantly swung his head around until his torch picked up a reflection of something.
'What is that over there?' he said.
'Want to go have a look?' said Omo.
'Yes, absolutely.'
They veered off to the left, and after walking about 200 metres found an abandoned oil tanker, lying on its side. Amber climbed up into the cab – the door to which had fallen off. As Amber's feet disappeared into the machine, Robbie mustered his will power to keep a smile on his face.
Amber's head reappeared. 'This thing is hundreds of years old. It looks like the self-drive has been disengaged so there must have been a human, or a robot, driving when it crashed.'
'I wonder why they just left it here,' said Robbie.
Amber jumped back down. He shone his torch back behind the tanker and started to walk in that direction, Robbie followed.
'
Look, you can still see skid marks, from the rubber treads, so the driver was going too fast before he crashed.'
'But why was he going too fast, and why was he over here, when the tunnels are over there?' said Robbie.
'It's a mystery. It's almost as if the dude was frightened by something,' said Omo.
'I wonder if he survived,' said Amber.
'He must have survived else there'd be a skeleton or something,' said Robbie.
'Or perhaps the dude was badly injured, he gets out of the cab and drags himself further into the darkness, away from whatever was chasing him, and he's still there, keeping quiet and hoping it won't get him.'
Robbie looked round at the encroaching darkness and shuddered. He heard another broadcast, this time much louder, and he started.
'Had enough dude? All you have to do is say sorry and we can turn back.'
'I'm happy to continue if everyone else is.'
'Amber shrugged. 'It's just a tunnel.'
Omo nodded, he turned and retraced his steps back across the cavern. Robbie and Amber started after him. Robbie had only gone a few steps when he thought he could hear a sound behind him. He looked back. Could he see a black shape in the greater darkness pushing itself off the ground with twisted limbs? Was a face turning slowly towards him, and fixing him with a look of blank hate? He felt a hand on his arm and jumped.
'Hey Robbie,' said Amber, 'come on.'
Robbie looked from Amber to Omo, who had stopped and was looking back at Robbie and frowning. Robbie squared his shoulders and smiled.
'Follow me,' said Omo, leading them back across the cavern, their footsteps echoing, as they approached the tunnel to the capital.
As they entered the tunnel Robbie felt a powerful blast of air coming at them, accompanied by a low level mournful moaning noise. 'Um, I suppose the wind is making that sound,' he said. He stopped to look around and up, estimating that this tunnel was somewhat smaller than the one they had just left, but still enormous. He thought he saw a flicker of movement at the top of the tunnel, turned off his light and switched to night vision.
